Dr. Cydne Holt’s 28-year professional career has been dedicated to forensic science. Cydne currently serves as an expert consultant, bridging advanced genomics and forensic DNA operations to increase solvability of violent crimes and unidentified human remains cases. After graduate school at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Cydne moved to California and joined the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Criminalistics Laboratory as a DNA Analyst, and later led the San Francisco City and County Forensic Services Division as Director. Cydne was an R&D scientist in a small, foundational technical team at Applied Biosystems that developed early DNA kits, software, and genetic analyzers compatible with CODIS and international forensic needs. In 2011 at Illumina in San Diego, Cydne led multidisciplinary teams responsible for forensic genomics innovation and NGS technology developments then in 2017 founded Verogen and served as Chief Scientific Officer.